Mailbag: Death penalty would not have been right for Dorner

Friday's article that the Orange County district attorney would have asked for the death penalty in the case of Christopher Dorner is a classic example of dumb and dumber. If you ever needed proof that the death penalty does not deter violent crime, the Dorner murder spree is it. Maybe what's been missing from the capital punishment debate all along is the right mode of execution. Let's just replace lethal injection with suicide and the courts can free up the log jam on death row.

In the editorial, the statement from Mayor Jim Righeimer that the next proposed charter "would be completely written by an outside committee of citizens" was of concern because the editorial did not mention that it would be an appointed committee.

Any charter proposed by an appointed committee can be altered by Righeimer's council majority before being voted on. The proposed charter could even be altered back to the same flawed language as the first proposed charter. This would not be the case if a charter commission was elected, which is what many residents wanted from the beginning.

So it seems that we are headed down only a slightly different charter path than we were on before. If the charter contains flaws like those in the first one, there will again be strong opposition to it.

Charles Mooney

Costa Mesa

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Flu scare, animals

Today's factory farms are virtual flu factories. Sick, crowded, highly stressed animals in contact with contaminated feces and urine provide ideal incubation media for viruses. As these microbes reach humans, they mutate to defeat the new host's immune system, then propagate by contact.

Each of us can help end animal farming and build up our own immune system against the flu by replacing animal products in our diet with vegetables, fruits and whole grains. These foods don't carry flu viruses or government warning labels, are touted by every major health advocacy organization, and were the recommended fare in the Garden of Eden.